The Price to Pay

[Lavi]

Taris represented everything that one could feel from the Force: comfort and wealth, as well as struggle and death. Taecelle felt all of these things flooding through the ecumenopolis. It was here that she remained in hiding, as the large population of peoples and the planet's relative location to both Hutts and the Republic and Jedi kept her safe from most prying eyes. However, a hidden sanctuary was bound to be discovered over time, and Taecelle planned to leave once that day came. The Force was her guide and protector on this perilous planet, keeping her safe from the gang violence and corruption of public officials. However, the Force kept a secret, because it wanted this to happen.

"Master?"

Taecelle turned around, and behind her was a robed man with hair of a faded green. For a moment, she was shocked to see him, and that shock turned to worry. He wasn't supposed to find her here, but now that she was found, there was no escape. She only hoped that there was time to escape what she feared may happen.

"Haar... W-why are you here?" Taecelle stammered, her mind unfocused by the turn of events. There was so many things flooding her mind, and there was so much she needed to tell him, but not here. She had a vision of him meeting her...

"I wanted to talk to you," Haar answered, taking the few strides that separated him from his master and embraced her, despite her own white robes being coated in dust and grit. It has been over twenty years since he saw his master, but the bond he had with his teacher did not fade a bit. He was slightly concerned that Taecelle seemed worried instead of jubilant about meeting with her old student, though it did not strike him as to why.

"There is a lot troubling the Republic, especially with the new threat from those who call themselves Bogan," he continued, "so I looked everywhere for you since I suspected you encountered them before. The Ospion Guardians disappeared from the star map and I did not feel your death, but your pain one day those years ago."

Her pain. Yes, about ten years ago, Taecelle felt many of her former compatriots scream in agony, mixed with the sounds of anger and maniacal laughter. It was then that she felt the end of the Ospion Guardians. That was the extent of her knowledge. The Bogan threat...

"Haar, before I answer, I have something more important that you must hear," she began, leaving only a momentary pause to detach herself from Haar before continuing. "You need to leave here, right now. I'm being followed. I had a vision of you dying in combat. I don't want that to happen now: you still have a galaxy to protect."

Haar paused. "Protecting the galaxy is what I would prefer to die doing."

"I'm not the galaxy, Haar, so please leave. You know of this 'Bogan' better than I do," Taecelle pleaded. She pushed the other back to make her point.

"Come with me to Ossus," Haar attempted to compromise. "The Jedi won't persecute you: they will protect you."

"I still have things to take care of before I return to any order or society," Taecelle answered stubbornly. "Go."

Haar slowly backed off, maintaining a face that desperately wanted Taecelle to accompany him. But she maintained her stance. It was time for herself to leave Taris, but not to return to a Force-wielding sect. Reluctantly, Haar left her there, disappearing the way he appeared.

It will be a few hours before the next bus out of Taris was due to arrive. Much could happen in that time, but Taecelle hoped that everything would turn out well.

 

[Malon]

Taris was a vile world in Uubacca's eyes. It was too much like the Galactic Capital of Coruscant. Next to him, draped in a black hood and shrouded in a black cloak, was Gareth Sode; the Dark Lord of the Second Order of Lettow. Days after the treaty of Kalakar VI, he was ready to complete his immersion in the dark side and finish his personal training. Uubacca, a Master of the Order, and a former Master of the Jedi Order, still found Gareth and imposing figure that sent shivers down his Wookiee spine. In the Force, the Dark Lord looked like a black hole; pure darkness.

Uubacca held back a chuckle when he thought of the target they've come after. Surely by now the Ospion Guardian woman they'd come for had sensed their arrival. Lord Sode had chosen the former Jedi Master turned Ospion Guardian to prove his strength in the dark side and solidify his rule over the Lettow.

Slowly, Gareth stepped down onto the landing pad and looked over the cityscape. "Master Uubacca...have you located the target?"

The large Wookiee craned his head to face the Dark Lord, "Yes, my lord. She is just north of here at a bus stop, waiting to leave for Ossus."

"Good. We'll confront him there." Gareth said.

"In the clear sight of the public?" Uubacca questioned.

"Do not be concerned, my young Master of the Lettow. We are still not known to the galaxy. This mission is twofold; kill the Jedi and complete my training, and frame the Dark Jedi for an attack on the Guardian. The Bogan will accept the blame for this."

With that, the two Lettow Dark Jedi headed straight for Haar's location.

 

[Lavi]

((Taecelle was technically a Knight at the time of her leaving the Jedi Order. She's established to be of Jedi Master-level strength at this time, however, due to training during the previous time skip))

The bus is almost here. Taecelle wanted to feel relieved, but there was that feeling she had. A sinister aura, maybe two. It is too muddled in the various surges and stops in the omnipresent flow of the Force to tell for sure. She hoped that Haar actually left as she told him to: he would be safe if he stayed away from her.

They were targeting her. That much was certain. Haar is a member of the Jedi Council: a much riskier target to pursue than herself, a former Jedi and a former Ospion. One without an allegiance to pledge one's service to: dying would turn no heads, affect no lives, and leave no mark to speak of. Why would anyone care that she died? Haar, her last protege, has greater responsibilities to attend to than herself. Taecelle contemplated her situation with the Force, bouncing her thoughts back and forth with the formless entity.

Is it possible that I would die here? I am always here. What is there to fear from death? Would they attack civilians? Perhaps, if it achieves the goals they have placed in the sand. What benefit would come from my death? Power. Status. Achievement.
Taecelle shuddered at the last word, though only slightly. Could there be no viable reason for the interest of these dark Jedi in her? No, she was a former member of the Ospion Guardians: the rival of the Jedi Order in the Alsakan Crisis. She felt the death of the Ospions, though she no longer was one of them then. She felt the rise of a greater darkness in the Force. Hence her seclusion from the galaxy at large. There was still one thing that she could not break her habit of repulsing to great extremes.

Taecelle heard a faint crackle of energy, and quickly shut it out of her mind. But the tingling of energy along her arms and legs, reaching out to her extremities seeped through the cracks in her mental defenses. The ragged looking woman looked about, laying her attention on an electric billboard to distract her mind from her mental predicament. Her experience in that dark cave over twenty years ago has still not been left where it belonged: in the past.

The darkness was inching closer, and Taecelle looked about nervously as more and more people piled into the spaceport lounge, awaiting their own transports to other places of the galaxy. Could death be included among those destinations? Taecelle felt that at least one person is not going to walk away from this spaceport alive. It was a cruel thought, but a thought nevertheless. No negotiations, no compromising. Only a battle to the death.

Taecelle reached into the fold of her dirtied white robes, taking something from within her raiment and keeping it hidden within her sleeve. If it came down to a battle to the death, she had no reason to submit to such a fate so easily.

"No death..." she murmured, lost in her own thoughts. She thought about that line of the Jedi Code, being brought to the thought from thinking so much about herself dying, Haar dying, the people around her dying. Death was deeply entrenched in thought.

"No death."

What truth is there in 'no death?' There is death as there is life. They are both aspects of the Force. Without death, life cannot exist. But what will always exist? Taecelle smiled as that question fluttered into thought. It is obvious what the answer is.

"Only the Force."

 

[Malon]

The two Lettow moved swiftly, dark cloaks billowing like a river of black clouds behind them. Gareth slid his hand down to his utility belt, obviously feeling for something. His skin brushed against something cold and metal. An evil grin crept across his face; what he felt was his lightsaber, newly constructed shortly after the treaty signing on Kalakar VI. He felt a certain excitement over the chance of getting to use it in combat against the Ospion Guardian known as Taecelle; the lightsaber's first blood.

He now felt the woman in the Force. She was close. Very close. He suddenly stopped and gestured at Uubacca to do the same.

"Remain here. Only come to me when I have summoned you through the dark side." he said, a certain icy coldness in his voice.

This caught the Wookiee off guard, "My lord?"

"I sense a disturbance in the Force. It reeks of the light side. A Jedi is on this planet somewhere. I have no intention of revealing us to the Jedi yet. If the Jedi comes to interfere, notify me." the Dark Lord hissed.

"Yes, my lord" the Wookiee reluctantly replied.

He then watched Gareth strode away, towards the spaceport. Once inside, Gareth unclipped his lightsaber and concealed it in his long, black robe's sleeve, allowing for easy access when the time came. In the Force, he sensed the woman again, and turned his head to spot her out of the corner of his hood. Silently, he cleared his mind of any distractions and focused his anger, his outright rage on the woman. Here was the woman, the last of the Ospion Guardians that had formed the current Dark Jedi sect, though rumor had it that she was no longer an Ospion Guardian.

He hated her. She was one of the former Jedi that had brought forth the weak organization that now called itself the heirs to the power of the dark side. Her Force aura only revolted him more; a mixture of the darkness and light. She disgusted him, and now it was time to right a wrong. To purge the last of the former Ospion from the pages of history. With his anger focused, his mind cleared, and his power ready, he began to walk towards her, ready for the kill.

 

[Lavi]

The dark side was getting stronger and stronger. She felt the pace of her breath quicken, keeping it physically under control as the moment approached. When the moment was right, she turned around to face the one who is approaching her.

She did not yet make a move, only to study the one who was watching her so intently. She felt the dark side ooze from his form. There was no doubt it was him he sensed.

"Your anger. For what reason do you have to hate?" she asked, barely loud enough for the other to hear.

 

[Malon]

What reason do you have to hate? The words hung in the air, though the didn't phase Gareth. He almost chuckled at the question. What reason? Why shouldn't he hate? His life had been one tragedy after another, one disappointed after the next, until he took it into his own hands and surrendered it to the dark side. His reason? The question almost insulted him, had he not cleared his mind of that kind of distraction. He considered not even answering the woman, but he changed his mind in the end. He could at least grant her last request.

"What reason?" he snarled, "You wouldn't know anything of it, but if you must know, my parents for one. They despised me. Treated me like a slave my whole childhood. I grew up on a Force-forsaken world, forced to grow up in harsh climates and rely on no one but myself. Oh I heard tales of the gallant Jedi and their heroism, but could they save me? No. Not even the Dark Jedi had anything to offer me. They were too busy flaunting their existence to the Republic and the Jedi to really search for the strengths of the Force and the power of its dark side."

He felt his anger growing and it delighted him. Every drop of anger empowered him; fueling his presence in the dark side of the Force.

"As for why I hate you, those reasons are my own. Suffice it to say that it is enough for me to want you dead and, in doing so, complete my training in the dark ways."

With a flick of his index finger, the hilt of his lightsaber flew from its hiding place and into his palm. His thumb now rested on the ignition switch. He gathered the dark side to him and let it fill up his being and overflow from him. Instead of letting it bring him to the center of the universe as the Jedi did when they immersed themselves in the Force, he forced it to make him the center of the universe. And with this dark power flowing off of him like a river of evil he prepared to fight the woman.

 

[Lavi]

"Even if the light has nothing to offer you, the dark does not either," Taecelle answered, unfazed by the drawing of the lightsaber.

"I took the third option: neither. Just something for you to think about," she continued.

Her own lightsaber slid into the palm of her hand, kept switched off. The Force was surging around the other. It was almost a chilling howl, if the motion had a sound to associate with it.

'Can you defeat me? Only time can tell.' she thought as she waited.

 

[Malon]

"That answer," he said coldly, igniting his blood-shine blade, "Is full of weakness."

He swiftly dropped into Djem So opening stance and then charged, empowering his legs with Force to increase his speed. Upon closing in on his apparent victim, he shifted the Force into his arms to empower his strike and then swung down hard at the woman's head.

 

[Lavi]

He was attacking, at last. Taecelle activated her lightsaber moments before Gareth aimed for the powerful strike. At the last moment, Taecelle maneuvered out of the way, igniting her lightsaber and angling it between herself and Gareth's lightsaber with one hand while using a Force push to knock him off balance with the other to dissuade a follow-up attack. The blade shined a brilliant blue, contrasting with the other's menacing red.

Around her, people were realizing what was going on and fleeing. Panic was building.

* * * * *

Fear, anger and the dark side. Haar had no intention of leaving Taecelle, though he wasn't sure exactly where Taecelle left to. With the action stacking up, it won't take long to relocate Master Taecelle. He moved on, walking decisively.
​

 

[Malon]

Gareth immersed himself in the dark side and in his Form V attack. The woman managed to push him back, but that would be the last time. After parrying her block, Gareth returned the kinetic force of her block with a strike of his own, and he didn't stop there. Baring down on her, he unleashed a barrage of precise strikes, testing her defense. Each blow was empowered by his anger, his rage, and the immense power of the dark side.

* * * *​

Uubacca sensed the Jedi's approach. His first impulse was to stop him, to prevent him from interfering, but then he remembered the Dark Lord's orders. Through the Force, he warned the Dark Lord of the oncoming trouble and then waited. This would be quite the show.

 

[Lavi]

Gareth was gathering a storm with his anger, but Taecelle had no concern at all. He was the storm, but she was the eye of the storm. There were no holes in her defense, though she showed no desire to go on the offensive. She was a master of Soresu.

Biding her time, Taecelle only waited for her opportunity.

 

[Malon]

Soresu. That was the form she was using. Gareth again almost slipped a grin through his assault. The two clashed, back and forth. If viewed from the sidelines, it almost looked like a dance with flashing red and blue as their blades collided. Gareth's Djem So was the perfect counter for her Soresu. When she blocked and struck back, he was able to take the force of her strike and work it back on her. Even so, she showed no weakening, no holes in her defense. Reaching out with his dark power, he closed an invisible grip around her throat in an attempt to choke her and distract her from the saber fight.

 

[Lavi]

As the blades clashed, Taecelle felt the flow of the Force altering, centered around herself. As she was not manipulating the Force herself, she only assumed that it was her opponent that was doing the work. Her greatest strength was not in her skill in the lightsaber, but mastery of the Force itself. Such trivial use of the Force was futile. She only blinked, and the Force's energies surrounding her neck dissipated.

Her defense remained solid, unwavering from her drawing on the Force.

 

[Malon]

Gareth felt his anger broiling, like a flaming furnace had replaced his heart. How could she shrug off his Force attack so easily? It infuriated him; empowered his strikes. Freeing himself from their locked blade combat, the Dark Lord pointed his free left hand towards Taecelle and, with anger burning in his soul, unleashed a barrage of Force lightning; the purest form of dark side energy. At first it spilled out and fried their surroundings, but as his anger and focus increased on her, the blast became focused solely on her, baring down on her with intensity unseen in his previous Force attack.

 

[Lavi]

The Force Lightning sparked an inner fear. Taecelle's determined face shrank away as the electricity flew from his fingertips. She raised her hand to absorb the energy, not so to turn away another attack, but to protect herself. Her past experiences began bearing down on her, weighing down her body.

A tear streaked her cheek as memories of her electrocution at the hands of a fallen Jedi came back to her. Although not physically injured by Gareth's attack, Taecelle still felt the pain that it incurred. It burned into her soul, reaching into her arms and legs, sucking out her life and ransacking it throughout her body.

Her defense wavered and one thought came to mind. 'I... can't go on...'

The hissing of a lightsaber from somewhere behind Gareth brought Taecelle's attention back towards the present, though her vision was blurred from the pain that echoed through her body.

It was a blade of green. 'Haar... you shouldn't have come...'

Although Taecelle was not on the verge of fainting, she felt very weak. Unable to stand any longer, she fell to her knees.

 

[Malon]

Gareth wasn't surprised by Haar's arrival. He had felt Uubacca's warning through the Force several minutes prior. Thumbing the ignition of his lightsaber once more, Gareth prepared to do battle with the Jedi. Unlike the woman behind him, the Jedi was full of a bright Force aura, though taints of the dark side were present. The Jedi also had a very powerful presence about him. That's when he realized who he was; it was Jedi Master Haar, a sitting member of the Jedi Council.

Excellent. Though he had known of a Jedi presence on Taris, he had never expected this. This was better than anything he could've hoped for. The former Ospion woman and now a Jedi Master that sat on the Jedi Council; both victims to his mastery of the dark side. Gareth assumed his Djem So opening stance once more, preparing for the current onslaught.

"I sense great fear in you both. Especially in you, Master Jedi. You have the tainting of the dark side in you, but you don't use it." he growled.

 

[Lavi]

"You mistaken fear for concern," Haar answered. "Was it you who planted that homing beacon on the holocron?"

He strode forward, gripping his lightsaber tightly in one hand. Right before he came within range of clashing blades, Haar gripped his lightsaber in both hands. He brought his blade over his head as he stepped in range, bringing it down in a powerful vertical strike. He timed his attack with a second maneuver, telekinetically calling his second lightsaber from his belt. It shot off his belt like a projectile, igniting as it crossed the short distance between himself and the dark Jedi opponent.

"Clever," Haar answered, uncaring as to the true answer of his question.

* * * * *
​

Taecelle was having difficulty focusing her eyes. They were fighting: she could tell that much. But she was not dead yet. Reliant on the Force to guide her, Taecelle struggled to her feet, without success. Instead, she dragged herself to the nearest piece of furniture to prop her back against. The pain clung to her body like water: she needed time to recuperate before returning to battle.

 

[Malon]

Gareth was in motion. A flick of his wrist blocked the first overhead strike and then he put some distance between himself and the Jedi. That's when the second lightsaber came with a surge in the Force, hurdling towards him like a projectile and igniting not far from him. Summoning the dark side, Gareth sent a wave of dark power at it, knocking the second lightsaber aside.

He was quick to return to his assault, bringing his lightsaber above his head and slashing down vertically at Haar's shoulder, aiming to cut the Jedi's arm off at the socket. As he fought, he tried to discern the Master's fighting style, to determine a pattern from his movements. Perhaps he could find away to break the Jedi's focus.

Concern? Concern leads to fear, my naive Jedi. Tap on it. Turn it into a weapon! Only then can you access the full nature of the Force!" he snarled.

 

[Lavi]

Haar left no room for Gareth to breathe, continuing his advance on the other. In doing so, he got underneath the worst of Gareth's attack, shoving the dark Jedi's downward slash aside with great force. Meanwhile, the levitating lightsaber sped upwards, then shot down upon Gareth on the opposite flank.

"Don't make me laugh," Haar answered.

 

[Malon]

Gareth recovered from Haar's shove and went back to striking and parrying the Jedi's lightsaber. He then felt another surge in the Force; the second lightsaber was fast approaching from his flank. Gathering dark power to him, he leaped above Haar, preforming a front flip over the Jedi's head and landing just behind him. While he was in mid-air, however, he had flipped the second lightsaber's ignition switch, igniting it so that now it was hurling directly for Haar. The Dark Lord didn't give Haar a chance to deflect it. From behind him, he unleashed another wave of Force lightning, this one more brutal than the one he'd used on the woman just moments before; the Jedi Master had angered him with his arrogance, and that anger was strengthening him.